I thought that design looked familar, I don't suppose any of you know about an aircraft designed in the late 1950's the Avro WS606A?
Well anyway, just wanted to say that the design shown for the Polaris is cool!

One of the interesting things about this ship is that it defies the normal conventions for logical orientation of a ship in space. Technically, “up” on this ship is toward the nose as that is the way the decks are oriented, but otherwise there really is no up or down other than the way we choose to portray it.

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Interesting moment on the set last week - we were discussing what posture the actors should assume on the Command Deck when they were seen to be coming out of hyperspace. I finally told them, act like you've been shoved suddenly down toward the surface of your desk. At which point I remembered something and said, "Do you know that you're traveling that way?" and pointed at the ceiling. They were a bit surprised.

Technically I guess no one should ever have a hair out of place; the TOS ship should never have shuddered and sparks should never fly out of consoles. Okay, sparks don't fly out of our consoles. That's pyro, and our insurance wouldn't like it at all.

I've backed out of this except for suggestions at this point - my attempts to experiment in 3D with design refinements were not yielding a lot useful. It was at that point that I asked aridas and Vektor to work directly together. I kibitz on what I like and what I don't like so much, and at this point Vektor just comes up with a lot of cool stuff. When he's satisfied and I'm satisfied, I guess we'll figure out who's going to mesh and animate the ship.

One movie director once said that his job got a lot easier once he realized that people working with him were really smart and experienced and that when they asked him to make a choice - say, "red or blue?" for a prop - they'd already eliminated every bad choice, every option that just wouldn't work. His job was just to respond according to his taste.

I would love to build the model for the Polaris once the design is finalized, but I'm going to have to leave the animation work to someone else. I just don't have the time or the resources to pull that off. Although, I wouldn't mind having a hand in storyboarding the sequences if they haven't been already.

That's certainly something we should discuss then, Vektor. Your skills as a modeler are formidable. We'd have to work out issues that you've brought to my attention about conversions between formats, etc.

That's certainly something we should discuss then, Vektor. Your skills as a modeler are formidable. We'd have to work out issues that you've brought to my attention about conversions between formats, etc.

These are, of course, preliminary, with lots of parts and pieces yet to be added and lots of detailing to be done. Much of it is still subject to change but I felt it was time to move beyond the concept sketches, especially since Dennis and his team are starting to look at 3D assets for the effects work.